WESTMINSTER – The stage for a tragedy was set when a woman slipped behind the wheel drunk and turned the ignition key, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday.

Ashley Selina Bryan's blood-alcohol level was 0.17 percent, more than twice the legal limit, about 2½ hours after her Honda Civic struck a disabled Chevy Camaro, Deputy District Attorney Anna McIntire said in her opening statements of Bryan's trial on vehicular manslaughter charges.

The Camaro had come to rest on the shoulder after a first accident on the northbound 57 freeway at Katella Avenue, its front end partially in the slow lane, the prosecutor said.

The impact of Bryan's Civic on the night of April 2, 2011, pushed the Camaro into passenger Cameron Cook, 18, who was standing outside of the vehicle near a guardrail, knocking him over and into a concrete embankment about 50 to 60 feet below.

Cook, a college student from Ladera Ranch who graduated the year before from JSerra Catholic School in San Juan Capistrano with the Camaro's driver, Logan Vescio, died at a hospital about five hours after the crash.

He was the "the person that paid the ultimate price that night for the defendant's reckless" actions, McIntire told jurors in Superior Court Judge Lance Jensen's courtroom at the West Justice Center in Westminster.

Defense attorney Jerry Schaffer acknowledged that Bryan, 26, of Highland, drove drunk that night, saying the facts of the accident are not in dispute.

But she was not speeding and "by all accounts she's driving safely and normally" when she came upon a hazardous condition – the Camaro sticking out in the slow lane – and didn't react correctly, he said.

She clipped the disabled vehicle, but "she didn't bring about the hazardous condition," Schaffer told jurors. "It was a chain reaction of events that brought about (Cook's) death."

Bryan is charged with one felony count each of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated with gross negligence, driving under the influence of alcohol causing bodily injury, driving with a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 percent or more causing bodily injury, and a sentencing enhancement of multiple victims.

Vescio also suffered injuries in the crash, but recovered. He and Cook were headed to Vescio's school, Claremont McKenna College, to hang out with friends.

If convicted, Bryan faces a maximum sentence of 11 years and eight months in state prison.

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